War, huh
Good God y’all
What is it good for
Stand up and shout it
Nothing
– Edwin Starr, 1970

28 years later, 38 if you’re using the new arithmathmatics ;), Warhammer, however, gives some fair first impressions.

So I pre-ordered Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning.

Why? No WoW beta invite to mess around with the expansion content? (Not that I truly wanted to do that anyway.) No, that’s not the reason.

It’s because I have kept up with WAR a little now. And the part that got me hooked was seeing the town of Prague on a map. Sold! This was an alternate earth, a fantasy setting revolving around an alternate Old World. I’m kind of into history and geography and, yes, fantasy, and this combined it all for me. I had to play it.

So I got the pre-order box with the beta keys at GameStop on Sunday. Rushed home and started downloading the client at around 3pm. I was *not* using the downloader. I was in a queue of 2,000. (FilePlanet must have had record account sign-ups this weekend. I did not sign up and sat in the public queue.) By 12 midnight it was reporting 100 minutes left to go, and I had checked “make sounds when download ready.” As if I needed to be present to kick the download off when the time came? Uh… So I actually read the directions better and they said the Downloader was required. I loaded that up, restarted and went right back to end of the queue of 2,000 people. 23 hours later, literally, the file finished downloading (all automatic, thank you very much) and I ran the setup. Another 20-30 minutes and it was patched.

That left me about 30 minutes to play. I probably played for an hour until 1am again. And I’d have gone much longer had it been a Friday or Saturday night.

I picked the Order side, Witch Hunter. (Coming from playing my Druid the combo moves seemed they would be most familiar at the moment.)

First impressions, and I only had limited time and only created 1 character:

I liked that I could give my Witch Hunter a Victorian look. Handlebar moustache. Long used to war, his hair is gray despite a strong build. His pale blue eyes highlight a scar that nearly took the left one out.

If I made one of those warrior priests I’d definitely give him the Marine “high and tight” look.

This avatar visuals, at least for the human males I ran through, do not suffer from the Uncanny Valley effect. I did not like EQ2’s or LotRO’s looks. I do these. That’s important for me.

Entering the world I just started moving around. Yes, I could run and jump by hitting the space bar. Yay! (Guild Wars you’re stuck to the ground, no jumping.) So I ran around and jumped over fences and low walls and it was not bad.

Slowing down I looked for purpose. The quest givers were obvious. I did not pick up the pvp quest but instead ran a few of the introductory ones. No yellow exclamations or question marks, and that was nice. Not that they’re bad in WoW, but this is a different game.

The world itself, graphically, reminded me of LotRO. Everything slightly washed out. But nice. The font over the people’s heads reminded me of LotRO. You know, in honesty, I really wasn’t interested in the graphics. Not yet. I wanted to be running around and doing something. I can’t tell you how good those trees looked, but thinking back on it, the ground leading north, the rocky ledges, looked real good.

So there I was, sent to go get farmers out of their burning houses where marauders had them trapped. Combat felt pretty good. I attacked and the target got hit.

The Witch Hunter’s moves, at level 1, didn’t make sense though. I’d read earlier that I was supposed to “accuse” with sword cuts, i.e. build up combo points, and then “judge” with the pistol. I had all of two attacks to start with. Ranged pistol, and melee. But when I was in melee range it said I was too close to fire my pistol. That problem got solved when I hit level 2 and learned the finishing move with the pistol.

So I rescued some farmers, convinced more to come fight with us, and engerized some soldiers who’d taken to cowering in the bushes to rejoin the fight.

Fighting humans was fine, but fighting bats was odd. It wasn’t looking right for some reason. You don’t get the sense of a solid connection with them when you hit.

I did manage to get the Witch Hunter boots from a quest. And I got the Witch Hunter jacket to drop for me from a random mob. And I was on the verge of heading into some crypts with the reward being the gloves of my Witch Hunter outfit. Every drop that was useable, and not vendor trash, was useable by me. (I upgraded my dirk to something better too.)

Oh, yeah. The merchant in town offers dye so you can colorize some or all of your gear to a custom color. And one of the quest rewards was for a choice of two dye colors, for one piece apparently, of shadow grey or grave earth (or some such). Grim. But standing at the merchant, and selecting the colors and applying them to my set, it looks pretty cool.

My first impression: I will definitely be exploring this world further. I am totally intrigued about the public quests and the rvr part of the game, neither of which I’ve tried. I want to see more of this world. And the “completionist” in me wants to collect the full Witch Hunter’s garb. I need that hat. And so much more.

The wife has a LotRO account. We both have WoW accounts. I’ll have this WAR account. Heck, anyone got some spare hours to share with me? Too little darn time!